International Marketing Strategy Assignment Help

Executive summary

This report will show us about starting a new firm in a different country and establishing international marketing strategy. Our new venture in a different country where our product line is not available and we create our marketing strategy and build distribution ways to reach our expected position in the market and gain higher margin. We choose the country and select the product, then made some research on the country. Our prime strategy was to reach consumer and gain their trust. And eventually it gets easy as the people of the country gives priority to trust. From this report we are able to learn-

• The procedures of starting a new firm in a foreign country
• The obstacles that could occur and our strategy to go beyond those obstacles
• Before venturing in other country we need to learn their environment and culture

Introduction

I have a company in Japan. We produce our product and then sell them in the market. Our product is really famous in the Japan market. And off course Japan has really competitive market. Our company generally produces various snacks items like Instant Noodle, soup etc. every business man seeks the opportunity to grow its business though it is big enough in its own market. So at first we need to select the country where we want to invest our money. This is the place where we do our researches regarding international business which lead us to the result of where we can achieve our goal of investing money to other country. The significant country’s advantages and disadvantages should line up chronologically. Then we need to take in account some thoughts of the research. International marketing research process (Toleman), is given here:

Firm objective: the objective of the firm needs to define clearly. Any confusion in the objective may not give us expected result.

Information required: our product may tell us which information would give us proper decision. So we need to have,

• Market orientation: it tells us what kind of aims or interest the expected country’s market has.
• Strategic orientation: this shows us if our strategy could get the expected aims or interest.
• Problem orientation: what kind of problems may arise and what would be our desired solution to reach our goal.

Problem definition: we need to define our problems where we will sort out them under many topics and try to realize them. The long term problem should take our concern.

Unit of analysis: we need to analyze the whole planning process chronologically. Create steps in analyzing. The analysis could be under country, region, global, subgroup segments within countries. Not everything can show the same result to the same geographical area, again the consumer behavior also differs in every place. The benefit from small region would be less than that comes globally. But whenever you go in bigger place and bigger profit you get bigger risk. It also varies within countries.

Data availability: the required research information may not be available. Sometimes the data does not provide reliable information. Sometimes we know which data would be enough for us. We may want secondary data which won’t be available for us. If we can’t get desired information we need to be sure the alternative way.

• Asses’ value of research: the expense on our research need to show us the benefit we can get through this. It tells us the research value.
• Research design: the research design is three types – causal, descriptive and exploratory.

Data analysis: our data needs to be analyzed finally. And this final result would lead us in taking decision.

Interpretation: the presentation of our data analysis gives us the result.

Product and place decision

We take the decision of build our company in Kenya and selling them Instant Noodle which is not available there.

Process of marketing

Here we would show our whole process of entering into the market and realize if our strategy is compatible with their competitors and if we need any kind of alternatives. Here we know everything related to our invested country Kenya and also our product.

• Analysis: Our contexts in analysis were political, economic, social, technology, legal and environment. The politics of Kenya is not very much stable. It’s a democratic country. Sometimes it is really rush there. It’s a small country. People need to stay away their business because of political instability. The economy also gets attacked by it. And the politics affect the economy when the business gets shut down for this economical distress. The social changes occur here very often. The society has many generations. They can’t get along very well. Their likes and dislikes vary so much that sometime the new generation expectation of idea or simple food may vary. So we can’t get both of them to be our consumer of the same product. Their technology doesn’t leave us behind as we are very good in this sector. Regulations of the law and government needs to go through their long term solutions and become reliable to the government. The consumer keeps internal and external influence on the decision making of both the companies.
• Planning: our planning to enter the market and take position goes like this- at first we enter the market where we launch the product which is not available there. There must have been several market segments. We cannot enter every market. We need to select the market where we want to make our position. Then we need to watch the segments of that significant market. We choose our target segment. Our target group can be the people of today’s generation. If they love our product then we can take position there. So this is the place where we can’t make any mistake. This is our entry. If we can’t get the primary attraction then we may not enter ever. So our product target is our prime area where we try to make our product great for our target segment. Then we decide our objective which will we get then soon.
• Implementation: after the planning we start to implement our ideas. At first we choose the product price. As the product is not available there so the product raw materials won’t be there easy to get there. But as the life cycle of the product the starting period is when people get really attracted to it. So initially the price of the product may be a little bit higher but it slowly decreases as the life cycle goes up. Slowly we give some price reduction or some rebate .the product place promotion by giving some bonus with it and also the consumers get it easily. There are also physical evidence process management and people of Kenya who allow them to implement our plan.
• Control: to take control over the product we need to see return on investment, awareness, create purchase intention of people, make them satisfied, proper distribution channel is there. All of the things get them proper control on their product of other peoples market.

The wheel of international marketing task

We observe here international marketing wheel. The important role played by it is given below,

• Foreign environment: foreign environment here is not controllable.
• Domestic environment: domestic environment here is also not controllable by us. The inter government sometimes feel haphazard to control it.
• Firm environment: this can control by us. We can control our firm’s future through this.

Approaches to internationalization

Internationalization is the way of making the product global. There are some approaches we need for our firm to internationalize (Fletcher, Crawford)

• Stage approaches: we have less resources at the starting so we also gives less commitment but gradually we learn to get committed when we get experienced in this country.
• Learning approaches: whenever we do business to other countries we learn culture, others environment. So we get committed with other countries people which make our international relationship greater
• Contingency approach: whenever we find good business we know that something according to our plan would occur in the near future. Thus this is our opportunity to take something to Kenya which is our opportunity and also their experience of having something which is not available there.
• Network approach: create value through internationalization. When a firm is new and it invests a new country then it is great. But entering a market and gaining a position which was already there is surely enough good opportunity.

Hire Expert Writers at Affordable Price

• Get Guaranteed Quality Assignment Help
• On-Time Delivery
• Professional Academic Writer
• Best Price Guarantee

WhatsApp Get Assignment Help

Marketing environment at Kenya

As we wanted to take our product globally so we start from Kenya. we think that to better cope up with the inter country environment we should keep a manager who would responsible for explaining and maintaining any kind of situation regarding our business in that country . As the customer of that country mainly drives that country’s market, so we thought it is our prime objective to learn customer mind. Our target segment was young generations who liked tasty and flavored food. But we got lucky there as the old generation also wanted to taste our food. So we thought about another thing here. We would like to expand our product line and creating a new line we wanted to add this old generation but we made a bit change here in the flavor. We did some research on the old ones and analyze that in our production. To the new generations we were famous but it was time for us to make some expansion. Our local researcher gave us the data and we bring in the market our reformed instant noodle, with the new flavor and taste. At first it was test transmission for us. If that product line gets crash then we should go for the alternative way because in the business in a simple crash of product line would bring your failure. There are threats of competitors here. They are threat mainly for our new product line. and obviously everyone thought it’s a brave move for us within this short span of time .but amazingly it was not bad , rather in some locality it was welcomed so warmly that we become hopeful about our new product line . We dig some more research. And slowly our product got attraction for some city people. But still there are many target segments. The old person who lives in city is different from those who live in the small town and who lives in village even more difficult to interpret their expectation.  And again our business expands here. Which means our new product line requires more raw materials, more people to work, more advertising, advance distribution procedure in total everything in our business requirement gets doubled as we opened a new segment. The government was not very much co operating with us. They have many laws and regulations, many trade blocs, whom we need to maintain. The local distributor and the intermediary is also our obstacle there. We need to kind of stay committed to them for distribution, but they have some illegal ways of making profit in their business seemed threat for our business. But we dint want to upset any of our stake holder. Their political system is not so good, they have complex legal requirement, their cultural norms are exceptionally different from us and they are making economic development. So it’s not easy what they would think before taking any business decision. Prediction about them is difficult, but it’s not impossible. You just need to go slowly and dig deeper. The economy is not very much stable but it’s also unpredictable in terms of whole world. The world economy is volatile and very often in crisis. And every country is getting interconnected through this economy. They are not just to blame. Whole world economy is creating this.

Communication to the consumer

In our domestic market we always maintain our relationship with the customer. For us customer is always right. So in our international business we wanted to know our customer. Our prime consumer was new generation. The teenagers and the children who likes to eat snacks. But the teenagers are tricky generally. If u can get their attention then it’s ok but you need to keep that attention on you always. Their mind is always changing. They always know new things. And new is an attraction for them. They can’t stay on the same page always.  After sometime you need to research again about their choice. You need to learn about them. We thought to use technology to reach them. Our communication to them was easy with it. We keep our product in online shop and also give some quiz question related to our products. We launch discounts in our product. The quizzes give us our impression on them. We started giving some advertisement. In the billboard, television, radio everywhere we can think of reaching our target segment. This tries of reaching customers make us different from those local sellers.

The culture & our overview on Kenya

Their culture is their pride but also the old generation has taken it to some kind of superiority. And studying other nations culture requires many approaches. It’s the main secret in them. In many places we have seen culture changes with modern technology and people get adapt with it. But in Kenya it does not change with the modern technology their culture remains the same. Some people nurture it like their growing child. They recently started to embrace the international business. But still they are the most developed economy of eastern Africa (export.gov) with GDP of USD 32.417 billion and estimated population of 39.08 million whom a large portion of them is young, well educated and have entrepreneurial tradition. But large portion of them is poor. They have higher infrastructure but not all of them, it’s uneven. By removing or decreasing financial distress they only can lower the amount of unemployment rate. So they have economical distress with fluctuating inflation rate and dropping growth rate due to political unrest situation. Recently they are having food insecurity and require a great amount of food aid. Though they have natural assets but recently nature doesn’t show them happy face. They have huge tribal tension along with all of these and like our domestic country corruption is also a problem. The weather situation and inflation rate fluctuation creates high price on food. They are suffering from account deficit which increases private investment. Tourism has become third largest industry in Kenya. Against all the odds we can say that investing on food is a great idea in Kenya.

Challenges &opportunities in the market

Comparing with the neighbor they have good infrastructure and higher educated young generation with fewer opportunities for them. There are not big but small amount of price sensitivity in the market which is good for us. It’s really a great challenge for us who expect to have a higher margin. The government is not very much effective in maintaining law in business, land and for increasing violence.  Bribery has become a common problem there. The legal procedure is neglected because of it. General people are not getting their rights for political party which includes foreign investors. Still they have higher demand and growth in telecom industry. They have become the leading electricity generator in eastern Africa. They have also road and housing construction opportunity there.

Strategy to enter the market

The rule for entry is to appoint an agent or distributor and then register as an investor when sales have grown enough. It works as logistical conduit financial hub for east Africa. There are many investors like us who has already taken a place in the market. Resources under Kenyan law are either impractical or costly. So we may not rely on government that much. Our strategy is to keep our consumers closer to reach them our ideas, our thoughts, our new products and trends and get along with our distributor as we are bound to some of them. Kenyan people have traditional thoughts. They value quality and for it they are eager to give any price. They value trusts, relationship. So we need to keep our customers closer, so that they can contact us and we can get their trust. We will value their thoughts.